Next up in the campaign to turn the Benghazi attack into Obama’s Jimmy Carter? Danielle Pletka, one of the architects of the false claims that got us into Iraq War.

She draws a parallel between the Obama Administration’s treatment of the Benghazi attack and Spanish Prime Minister José Maria Aznar’s attempts to blame the March 11, 2004 Madrid bombing on ETA rather than al Qaeda. Of course, in Pletka’s version, Aznar’s willingness to get suckered into Bush’s–and Pletka’s–illegal war in Iraq bore no role in Aznar’s loss at all; just his attempts to hide the real culprits.

Why did Aznar insist it was ETA? Simple. He didn’t want the Spanish people to believe that the terrorist attack in Madrid was related to Spain’s involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, fearing they would punish him at the polls. Ironically, however, it was not the bombings themselves that doomed Aznar and his party in elections held three days later; rather it was the handling, the appearance of a cover-up, and the widespread belief that all of the above was done in the aid of Aznar’s political fortunes rather than policy.

I’m sure this effort to win political advantage from Stevens’ death has no connection with the fact that Pletka’s husband, Stephen Rademaker, is a Romney foreign policy advisor. (h/t Ali Gharib) I mean, given Pletka’s history, she’d be willing to politicize an Ambassador’s death all on her own, without the obvious conflict of interest of her husband’s political investments and career possibilities.

Again: there are legitimate reasons to have Congress investigate this. Which is why it would be nice if the Romney campaign would stop this celebration and allow people without obvious conflicts of interest–someone like Mike Rogers–to conduct that investigation.

Marcy has been blogging full time since 2007. She’s known for her live-blogging of the Scooter Libby trial, her discovery of the number of times Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded, and generally for her weedy analysis of document dumps.

Marcy Wheeler is an independent journalist writing about national security and civil liberties. She writes as emptywheel at her eponymous blog, publishes at outlets including the Guardian, Salon, and the Progressive, and appears frequently on television and radio. She is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, a primer on the CIA leak investigation, and liveblogged the Scooter Libby trial.

Marcy has a PhD from the University of Michigan, where she researched the “feuilleton,” a short conversational newspaper form that has proven important in times of heightened censorship. Before and after her time in academics, Marcy provided documentation consulting for corporations in the auto, tech, and energy industries. She lives with her spouse and dog in Grand Rapids, MI.